Friday, June 15, 2012

I am writing to provide some
feedback about how impressed I am with the durability Apple devices.

Not so bad, right? At Box Office, Corio St, where Stick
offered
condolences and coffee

A month ago, while riding to university,
a strap on my bag snapped, and caused it to fall on to the road. Before I was
able to retrieve the bag, it unfortunately found itself beneath the back wheel
of a school bus. No, he did not stop. Yes, I agree, that’s a bit rude. The bag
contained, among the normal university commute items, my Macbook Pro, iPhone
4S, and two external backups being moved for ‘safe keeping’. Immediately, I
resigned myself to the complete loss of everything in my bag, including my
beloved Keep Cup, and of course the 4 years of cancer research notes, my
library of 1200+ PDF papers, and the last 2 years of photos housed between my
Macbook and backups. Whilst dodging sweary soccer mums in Landcruisers, I retrieved the contents of my rather flattened bag, and
removing the unsurprisingly intact biology textbook, I proceeded to determine
just how bad my losses were.

After
being run over by a bus, which item survived:
A Macbook, an iPhone 4S, or a pair of reading glasses?

Yes, the back glass panel was
shattered, the metal frame was slightly bent, and getting the charging jack
connected required 15 minutes of patient manipulation, but my iPhone was
otherwise intact, and in perfect working order. I have a notoriously bad
history with mobile phones, and by some miracle avoided having to talk to my
phone company about requiring a new phone less than a fortnight after receiving
the new upgrade. It also allowed me to ring my boss to tell him I’d be late,
organise new bank cards, and call my mother to throw a tantrum maturely
discuss my bad luck. I would like to heartily congratulate Apple on the design
of their iPhone 4S, the durability of which allowed it to survive being run
over by a bus.

MacBook Pro Pancake

Unfortunately, the Macbook Pro
was not so lucky. Since 2010, that Macbook had been the workhorse of my PhD,
taking the all-nighters, conference presentations, 'Protect Research' campaigns, mass data analysis, movie
marathons, and Twitter trawling in stride. Initially, I was excited by the fact
that it appeared to be in one piece. The outer casing, whilst now decorated
with a charming array of scratches, dents, and depressions, was still intact,
as was the ‘clam’ hinge. The Apple logo hadn’t even sustained a mark! Sure, it
wasn’t quite closing properly, and you could see exactly where every piece of
internal hardware was located, but all the pieces were contained inside the
hard casing! That much could not be said of the external hard-drive, which was
so badly broken that it was unable to be picked up from the middle of that busy
road, or the USB drive that was literally snapped in two. Unfortunately, the
tinkling of glass indicated the screen was completely destroyed, and whilst
making a gallant attempt to start up, the ominous knocking of hard drive
components and loud, previously inaudible, whirring of fans shattered the last
of my hopes. Admittedly, those hopes were minimal after discovering my insurance didn’t
cover ‘transit damage’. A quick trip to my local Apple reseller confirmed my
worst fears, with the device declared “unsalvageable”. The lovely lads did,
however, whip out the hard drive for me, with murmured, half-hearted encouragements of
“perhaps a professional recovery service can save something for you”. Alas, the
$1,900+ recovery fees far outstrip the resources of a PhD student stipend, but
I took home the priceless lesson of ensuring you have multiple back-ups, stored in water/fire/terrorism/bus-proof safes, that
are never allowed within a 1km radius of each other under any circumstances.

Shattered, but functional

New ergonomic iPhone design

The fact that the iPhone emerged
with little more than cosmetic damage is a testament to the durability of the
devices designed and built by Apple, and despite the damage it incurred, I
remain very impressed about how intact the Macbook was, allowing it to be
quickly and safely retrieved from the flow of irate peak hour traffic.

I fully
intend to purchase a replacement Macbook Pro, once my savings account reaches
Apple-supporting levels. Five years should just about do the trick.

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A student, a scholar, a sucker for punishment. Lives for the dream, and dreams of the life. A daughter, a demon, a victim to vision, an inamorata, a friend. Horrified by the depth of human ignorance and cruelty, but working toward a less horrific future.